Management and analytics technology vendor NetIQ is aggressively growing its indirect sales mix, a move bolstered by its appointment late last month of a new worldwide channel sales vice president, Michael Ragusa. Shortly before Ragusa assumed his new role, CRN Editor Heather Clancy spoke with NetIQ CEO, President and Chairman Chuck Boesenberg about his priorities in the security marketplace, given the company's acquisitions last year of Marshal Software and PentaSafe Security Technologies.

Redirection of project means integration server won't be part of Java suite

Sun Microsystems has revised the direction of a project to upgrade its integration server, a move that indefinitely postpones the product's inclusion in the Java Enterprise System (JES) software suite, a Sun executive said.

Part 1 in VARBusiness’ Outlook 2004 Series

We believe that three consecutive months of job growth (August through October) is positive assurance of an accelerating recovery. Employment grew by 126,000 jobs in October alone, the best showing in nine months, as reported by the U.S. Labor Department. Correspondingly, the results of VARBusiness' very own survey of top executives who run the nation's largest business and technology integration companies indicate that employee-utilization rates have hit a six-quarter high, rising 20 percentage points from the same period a year ago.

Part 2 in VARBusiness’ Outlook 2004 Series

Employment practices appear to be on the upswing as well among VARs. At the end of the third quarter, VARBusiness 500 executives said the majority of their workforce is being utilized. In fact, employee utilization has increased every quarter since the first quarter of 2002.

Part 3 in VARBusiness’ Outlook 2004 Series

Eager to leverage revenue opportunities wherever and however possible, the channel is developing a fervent interest in building a specifying/influencing business. It's a smaller cut of the pie than selling, and it goes against a winner-take-all instinct, but, hey, it's a way to get in on the action. Our State of the Market findings reveal that the larger the solution provider, the more apt it is to influence product and service sales: Midsize (68 percent) and large VARs (66 percent) are more likely than small VARs (57 percent) to specify or influence professional services. Midsize firms (59 percent) are also more likely than small firms (47 percent) to specify or influence technical services, according to the research.

Part 4 in VARBusiness’ Outlook 2004 Series

Part of earning a reputation as a key IT influencer is the ability to build and maintain efficient communications with select vendors. You told us through our study that, essentially, you're satisfied with what vendors tell you -- and when. While it is the rare provider that said some vendors contacted them too frequently, only about one-third of respondents were dissatisfied with the infrequency of contact. Not surprisingly, smaller companies are slightly more forgiving of vendors that give them short lead times (less than four weeks) to introduce new products than are midsize and large firms (S/M/L: 30 percent/21 percent/20 percent). Large firms are more likely than small and midsize firms to require more than 12 weeks' lead time (S/M/L: 15 percent/ 20 percent/27 percent).

Part 5 in VARBusiness’ Outlook 2004 Series

VARBusiness' State of Technology research reveals that the No. 1 profit producer for 2003 will be consulting services (53 percent), up 19 percentage points from 2002. In addition, twenty-three percent of a VAR's 2003 profits, on average, is expected to be derived from custom and/or third party software. Twelve percent will stem from systems, including peripherals and accessories, and the remaining 12 percent will come from networking hardware and storage.

As the CEO of Micro Focus, Tony Hill sees Cobol applications on mainframes as assets that IT organizations can leverage on new, more nimble Windows, Linux and Unix platforms running Web services technologies. Hill says Micro Focus is dedicated to providing tools for that migration -- and earlier this month, Micro Focus launched a variant of its tools that support the Microsoft.Net framework. In an interview with CRN Editor-in-Chief Michael Vizard, Hill said Micro Focus' greatest asset is its ability to help IT organization sweat the maximum value out of existing applications.

Hewlett-Packard Co. said Jeff Clarke, a former Compaq Computer Corp. executive who played a key role in integrating Compaq's business operations into HP after they were acquired by Hewlett-Packard, has resigned from the computer company.

Companies publish Java specs to standardize common processes across products

While a large group of EMC's investors continue to hope that EMC will sell parts of itself to create more clear valuation for them, EMC is likely heading in the opposite direction by considering more acquisitions, according to a top analyst.